Che may have been referring to the ancient (extinct?) race from Larry Niven's Known Space universe:

"The Thrintun (singular Thrint), in Larry Niven's fictional Known Space universe, were a long-extinct species which ruled the galaxy through telepathic mind control. Humans knew them as "Slavers", since "Thrint" is unpronouncable to the human larynx[citation needed]. They debuted in Niven's World of Ptavvs, in 1966." (from the Wikipedia entry for "Thrint")

I don't know whether the Thrintun in this story are meant to be Niven's Thrintun or not... (If not, Che will probably have to change the name to something else if the story is republished; if so, Che may need to get Niven's approval before using the term in any widely-read publication.)

I know that I have to be careful in naming my aliens. There is a safe way to do this -- but it makes the names difficult for the reader. A random example would be something like "p'Rlbpx." Yeah, they're alien names, no mistaking it, but as a reader, such things bother me.

I choose names that are a little easier to read and/or pronounce. The problem being that they get too close to existing names or words.

Lately, I Googled one of my choices. I did find a match (in a reference to a RPG, IIRC), but kept the name anyway, seeing as it wasn't common, having only a single reference. Now, I don't know whether that name is copyrighted or not. If I take the story to publication, it could become an issue, but thankfully, the "Search and Replace" function makes the change easy -- even if choosing a replacement isn't.

It was good story, characters came off well, and the writing was pretty good. If there was some sort of theme, I was pretty lost. It seems humanity now serves either an alien race of lords or are they a class of superhumans? Again, overall good, but very bizarre.

“The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.”
-Mark Twain

Thank you for reading, and... OUCH! I knew that word had a Nivenish feel... I should have checked it. *sighs* Sorry.

The fact is I devoured Niven at a very young and impressionable age and some things just sank deep into my subconcious, so when I was looking for a name for a race of genetic slavers... Thrintun popped out... naturally. I'll have to change that, here and elsewhere. Thanks for pointing it out.